Soon enough I will have access to 100% of my salary as a real estate agent to deploy towards future assets, working my way towards "Fat FI" and greater time freedom in my 40s & beyond.Lessons learned?

As you say, the landlord is always perceived as the villain of the piece, a fat cat who does nothing more than sit back, rake in 'all the money' and count it.

We supposedly live in a new, enlightened era, where people are not judged on their name, their color, their creed, being bald, fat, etc.

Current market is trimming the fat, see it as an opportunity to eat market share. 

It's a super useful tool to help trim fat in a business.No matter what your business is or what you invest in, it's likely that 20% of your products/clients/properties/etc generate 80% of your revenue.

Those were fat years!

They'll hit you with fat fees on the front/back end, jack your rate up, and take advantage of borrowers who were either too stupid or too impatient to save up for a reasonable down payment themselves - and they want to be paid for taking the risk on (essentially - subprime) borrowers like this. 

Like for many of us in the RE business that could be running a successful PM company A brokerage or sell real estate and make fat commish or Loan officer for conventional or commercial loans etc etc. you need that outside income so you can afford to own rentals.One of my good friends has a picture on his office wall  its his dump truck trailer and old back hoe.. thats what he started with on his own.

@Greg Gangle it’s safer in my opinion to take your cash and stack it so you have an extra fat reserve account, ie if you pay extra on the mortgage you have to refi, sell or put a Heloc on it to access that equity in the form of real money.

That will change if the day ever comes when we use %%%% to buy things.1%, 2%, etc....are ways to describe the fat in milk.